Where Everything Grows

A new way to understand 60s counterculture

A collection of personal stories and photos documents alternative lifestyles in the Southwest.

As Peter Coyote points out in his contribution to Voices of the Counterculture in the Southwest, providing fresh insights into the heavily chronicled 1960s and ’70s is not easy. But through personal stories and thoughtful reflection, this new book seeks to highlight the ways that the countercultural narratives of that era, many of which played out across the sage-dotted deserts of the American Southwest, have seeped into and deeply influenced our own.

Though some of the means have changed — with underground newspapers replaced by social media — many of the issues rippling through society half a century later hark back to that earlier time, as racism, violence and environmental crises provoke new calls to “resist.” Amid all this, as Meredith Davidson writes, “It seems we are once again seeking a more wholesome approach to living and an awareness of something greater than ourselves.”

Voices of Counterculture in the SouthwestEdited by Jack Loeffler and Meredith Davidson208 pages, hardcover: $34.95. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2017.